SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Zumi]

As for going back to XI. You realize XI is almost the same as XIV in content now right. Low Man, Item Levels, little to no guild focus, single gear pieces that are BIS for almost everything. SE killed of XI, even if the XI fanboys wanted to go back the game is gone. XI-2 is not XI. just like Star Wars Galaxy was not the same when they redid the whole thing.

XI has a bunch of free weeks. Which I took advantage of and beat all the new Seekers missions and see the story line. More or less its the exact same game only with more spells, weapon skills and abilities. The item level cap has not raised from 119 for the past 2 years. You have basically the same amount of choices you have for gear that you had at the previous 75 and 99 caps.

The game is still very unfriendly to the solo player. You can't solo anything if you want to do endgame. To do any of the new endgame stuff you need either a party of 6 or an alliance for the harder stuff delve and incursion. There is only a couple of LS that actually do hardcore stuff per server and most of them don't want new members. Having such a high barrier of entry to do any of the new content makes a lot of people leave the game and being a old game they aren't going to attract any new players.

The content in FF14 is far more accessible. When I was doing the Seekers story mission the boss Balamor took 14 hours to do, he isn't even the last boss either. I shouted in town, for people several hours to form a group. 4 hours were spent shouting for people. We wiped about 10 times due to the whm being bad, every wipe ment we had to farm mobs for a new entry item and wait for our 1 hour abilities to come back up. If this was FF14 I could just of queued up and got another group lol. Probably one of the reasons only the hardcore FF11 fans still play the game. I don't think people enjoy shouting in town for hours to do story missions.

[Sho86]

That's how progression works. Out with the old, in with the new.

Lv50 X boss is down, great you beat it, its old. Lv50 Y boss comes in, its new, time to learn new stuff and see new sights.

When you resist you're showing you a) don't understand the concept of progression and b) are unwilling to move forward because of unhealthy attachments/nostalgia.

Here we go with that "unhealthy" word again. No one is 'resisting' new fights and story coming out. Having new gear doesn't mean it has to do more numbers, it can have its own unique ability or stat combos. Those who want to sit with their current gear(at the current character level) could do so, those who want the new look/new stats/ability can go grind for it, both sides win, both sides are given the chance to progress on content.

WoW players in Naxx gear who complained that their gear wasn't going to matter once The Burning Crusade hit.

The bar was raised entirely. There was room for character/player growth on a whole as your level grew. Your character was no longer at the top on its own, so likewise its gear would only be so strong (that of the characters level).

I said this because when your main intent is making old stuff relevant in the same scale as new stuff, you're either making concessions in gear design, content design or character growth. I'm not about to sacrifice any of those just because someone is upset their breastplate from final coil will become obsolete.

Nothing is being sacrificed when someone at Lv50 can do a Lv50 fight/story/raid. If the content itself is that bland to where its the same as what you just fought last patch cept bigger numbers, then that is the problem, not because we hit for the same numbers.

Gear is tangible, yes, but like everything else there will come a time when it has to be replaced. That's why I'll cling more to my memories raiding or the odd weapon/gear that makes sense for my character's concept (my gnome's favorite weapon in WoW was an axe I got while questing in deepholm, nothing from any raid) over the current top gear.

And I held onto my Lv 42 AF Honor Sword for PLD in XI. At its level it was worthwhile to use, but no longer any use to me at 50, 60, 75, whatever. The nostalgia is there because it was useful for its time and was meaningful to achieve, much like AF armor at 60s, and Relic armor at 75. They held their purpose at their level because the character held their level.

[Nalien]

Better than having an unhealthy attachment to gear while wanting to snuff the concept of progression as much as possible to keep said gear relevant.

It isn't even about that. Most of the gear they add is simply worthless from the start; see any dungeon drop after Darklight and before AF1.5. That gear was never relevant. Making it relevant actually adds a whole new activity to the game. Keeping gear relevant actually gives players more to do than capping tomestones on a weekly basis. Gods forbid this game has more content to do.

Also, you're pretty silly if you think progression is solely about throwing out the old. There are plenty of examples of progression where we've kept the old, or simply improved upon it. Why? Because humans like having options (see: Transportation), that is why people want such gear to remain relevant, because it gives them options. The only real sense of progression this game has is the Relic quest, everything else is more akin to a trend. We had the Darklight trend, the Mythology trend, etc. etc.. Progression in Coil would have been nice, always thought it'd have been better to keep First/Second Coil more relevant by having the gear from First upgrade to Second, and finally now to Final, rather than each new Coil dropping entirely new pieces that replace the old.

[Kyriea]

This may have been mentioned, I'm not sure as I haven't read through the whole post, but missing a weekly cap means that you are forever behind. Due to the community being the way it is, you are left out of content if you fall behind. This behaviour is actually promoted by the game style and way they judge difficulty. This game is very unforgiving in ways that it shouldn't be, all to be "competitive" with games that are all exactly the same.

XI broke the mould by being different, and no it wasn't as popular as WoW, but the players were loyal. SE have sold a lot of that for money, which is understandable as they are a business out to make money at the end of the day. It is sad to see a franchise like Final Fantasy being a victim of this system though.

Horizontal progression will be different, it will add various new challenges, but it's not as safe as copying the template from other games, so most likely will not be implemented. Also they can't use the same technique time after time like they can with vertical progression. They have to be even more creative, which uses more money and resources. I wish it would happen but I doubt it will.

[Atomnium]

Truth be told, I hardly see the logic behind the huge vertical progression with Ilevel and gears, the developer team have expressed in the past their wills and hopes to not let "olds" lv 50 dungeons unvisited and slowly dying but this is exactly what they re right now, they re useless and irrelevant = deads and unvisited :/

Our Ilv keep grinding at a SANIC-speed while punching every single pieces of "old" gears to the useless trash piles and the result is kind of amusing, they started to make an Ilv-sync on some old-dungeons so they don't look totally broken :x To me, if I was in their developer team... it would sound like an huge hint-warning about future problem with Ilv ^^;

Also, adding crafting materials poping out of nowhere and being able to desynthesis coil1 gears is like applying a bandage on a wooden leg it's a temporary solution on a serious problem.

The gear treadmill is going since way too long and created many problems over every sides of the players community, no matter if you re a casual, a new player or a raider it will punch you in the face in a way or another and trying to solve it with temporary solutions like I said above is a very bad idea in the long road**.

**Why? If the Ilevel doesn't stop at a final number for 3.0 and so it doesn't go further into gears customizations, SE will face a taste of their own medicine the hard way when they decide to release a second expansion in 2016-2017 : heavensward will be kind of useless when it come about gears, like ramuh or leviathan ex re useless gear wise when you can go farm shiva ex.

Oh and by the way, glamour as a temporary solution to fix every single problems caused by the gear treadmill will not work forever, we re not that stupid, all we want is an horizontal progression to enjoy every single corners of Eorzea the same way now and in the future.

[Berens]

LOL when i played FF11 i kinda wish we have a PF or DF system so we can fight Hnm/story mission without the waiting/claiming wars for pop items and HNM to get some of the BIS macro swap gears.

Mind you when FF11 first came out the lv cap was 50. It takes 2 expansions for SE up the lv cap to 75 and stay there for yrs. FF ARR is only 1 yr old, give it sometime to grow with the future expansions to bring all the different contents for gears.

[Tiggy]

see any dungeon drop after Darklight and before AF1.5. That gear was never relevant..

A great way to level desyth from the 60's and up, GC points that continue to remain relevant, and brand new players who don't yet have any currency stored or haven't had a chance to complete the 110 set yet since that takes time farming.

Come on man. It's very relevant. More relevant today than it ever was. The premise of your argument is false.

[MageBlack]

Golden Saucer is coming! Chocobo racing/breeding, Snowboarding mini-game, Triple Triad, etc will hopefully give you the diversions you are looking for. I know I am really looking forward to it!

[Prototype909]

The ultimate problem is that Coil is designed to be the end all, be all instance, but actually reaching that point doesn't really take very long. Players who are supremely dedicated to raiding reach the "peak" of the game too fast, and once you're there basically everything else just becomes a game of "How relevant is this compared to Coil, how does this help me if I'm already clearing Coil, what here is a substitute for Coil". A few weeks from now after people can start getting Poetics accessories that will have been the basic lifespan of Shiva EX - once people have the luxury of just buying a i120 piece that fight loses about half of its appeal - for people who are clearing Coil and getting Poetics Accessory upgrades it might already have none.

Like you can basically divide the game's content into "These are the fights that are relevant if you can clear Coil (Which at the moment are Shiva, for now, and...4 man dungeons to hit cap" and "These are the fights that are relevant if you can't". There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this because eventually one fight will end up being "The goal", but the fact that there's only one tier of content even in that stratosphere is a bit concerning, especially when all the gear eventually becomes vanity after 6 months.

All the other side content in the game (To me at least) barely feels fulfilling. Beastman Dailies, FATEs, Leves, Guildhests (lol), 4 Man Dungeons, they're all just mindless zergs and time wasters packaged up in different ways rather than something I would actually WANT to do, unfortunately at least in the case of 4 Man Dungeons SE basically forces you to care about them even if clearing them is basically a formality rather than something that requires effort at this point.

[Deathscythe343]

This is something that I have actually talked about with several people. Each time I find myself going back to the same example, Evrquest's Alternate Advancement system or AA. This was something that allowed players to gain xp that would net he/she points to spend to further improve their characters beyond just getting the best gear possible. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/aaskills.html. This link should give people a basic understanding of the system.

In every MMO that I have played since EQ, I have wanted to see a similar system in those games. Consider the amount of times players run dungeons, fates, leves, raids and have the xp earned in that time spent is essentially deleted from the system. Why not have it go some where? Why not give players a reason to keep endlessly grinding dungeons, fates, leves, and raids at max level?